Webhosting at its best? Theoretical and technical approaches to top - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Webhosting at its best? Theoretical and technical approaches to top level hosting services Presented by: Alexandru Lauran

Webhosting at its best? • What is webhosting? We all use the internet nowadays. It has become a big part of our daily routines. But most of us are blissfully unaware about what happens behind our favorite platforms online. We just take for granted that the internet is here for our well being. ** But have you ever thought where is the data coming from? It is retrieved from servers in the internet and someone puts the content there ** So what happens behind the closed curtains of the internet, and why are we talking about webhosting? ** This servers are hosted by so called hosting- or cloud providers, where the customer puts the content on the server of the hosting company, so that you can see it. Thats called web hosting ** Well, webhosting is an important part of what we use across the internet. Think of webhosting agencies as rental o ffj ces. You come to the webhosting agency with the need to have a home for your files and data (hosting the data). So in a sense, we rent you, the client, servers and space for your data to become available around the web.

Webhosting at its best? • What is webhosting? • What types of webhosting are out there? But there is more to webhosting than meets the eye. There are di fg erent types of hosting, both relevant and both important, but both mostly unclear to the common internet user. The types are as follow: SHARED HOSTING and MANAGED HOSTING. We’ll have to understand the fundamental use cases and di fg erences between those two, as understanding the di fg erences between them is really important to understand the underlying insides of webhosting. So the second part of our presentation will handle clarifying the concepts of shared and managed hosting and exposing a technical approach to availability of services and the things that di fg erentiate your average web host from the best web host you can get.


 Webhosting at its best? • What is webhosting? • What types of webhosting are out there? • Managed vs Shared Shared hosting gives you the possibility to install lots of apps, have an email address under your domain, play with a lot of disk space if you need, all of this being available on high end, highly available servers run by the webhosting company of your choice. You can administrate everything from a ControlPanel interface, without prior knowledge being needed. Seems nice, right? Well, there are some cons to this type of hosting, one of them being that even though a lot of webhosting companies advertise this type of hosting as unlimited, you can get some limits set on your subscription plans (CPU limits, Disk I/O). Shared hosting is literally shared, you can have hundreds of “neighbours” on the server you run your application on, so load problems can be an issue if mistreated. Another important thing to keep in mind when choosing a shared hosting plan is that you can’t have it customized towards your specific needs, what you see is what you get! So if you need a standard server, without any special configurations then shared hosting is the way to go for you. Managed hosting on the other hand o fg ers you the full 5 star experience of webhosting. It’s all about you, having a server specially created for your needs, without any limitations and an endless palette of customizations so you have the best set up for your business. No need to share this one with others. This type of hosting is highly flexible, so you can get top services and top performance. And guess what? If you look for speed, you can get it with managed servers. But there’s a catch. First you’ll have to pay a little more to have a managed server, but believe me the price/quality ratio is totally worth it. Most important thing though is that you’ll need a system administrator, as you won’t have a ControlPanel to manage the server yourself.

Webhosting at its best? • What is webhosting? • What types of webhosting are out there? • Managed vs Shared • Some managed hosting insights

Managed Hosting Insights • What you get? As i mentioned before, if you order a managed hosting package you get a customized experience. We talk to you, to get information on what CPU usage, RAM, and disk space will suit your project. After we get all this information we start the server setup process. Here the technical aspect is the most important, we install and configure underlying software such as Apache/Nginx webserver, mySQL, postgreSQL. We try to o fg er the optimal setup in terms of resource usage and speed.

Managed Hosting Insights • What you get? • Layered architecture Servers work on a layered architecture, and most of those layers are handled by the webhosting company. Here is an example of a layered architecture: - OS Layer - Server Software - Application Software We have to mention a primary di fg erence between managed and shared hosting. In a managed environment you, as a client, can’t choose what OS and Server Software you are provided. That is our job, as web hosters. The only layer you have control of is the Application layer. You can choose what CMS you use. The before mentioned layer is the only layer you directly interact with. The other layers are not directly available to the client. For example if the client is using Wordpress and he wants to update content on his websites, he logs in to his Wordpress account, but he is unaware if the server runs Apache, Nginx or lets say LightHTTP

Managed Hosting Insights • What you get? • Layered architecture • Security and updating policy One thing we hold important (important being a big understatement) is the UPDATING policy. Think of the machines as athletes that participate in a competition and the updates as training those athletes. Could they be performant without training? Definitely not! So can our servers perform without updates? DEFINITELY NOT!!! You may ask why updating policies are so important. Well, it’s a given fact that every software we use today has certain security leaks. We try to combat the imperfections that provide security risks towards our servers. Software becomes more vulnerable as time goes by, so the chances that someone will get into our servers and use your data in malicious ways grows. Patching and keeping every layer up to date is given high importance in this regard, because if there is one thing we don’t want to mess up is our clients data hosted on our servers. You need to understand that all the servers on the web are under constant attack and that out there someone is trying to exploit a server vulnerability as we speak. The moment you created a server on the web, you can see how and when attacks begin via server logfiles. We can tell you that attacks begin after 5 minutes of creating the machine. Remember that, 5 minutes!!!!

Managed Hosting Insights • What you get • Layered architecture • Security and updating policy • Recap of the advantages of managed hosting Our intention is not to scare you though. We will handle security for you. And while we are at this, we will handle everything for you. So, we got you covered all the way, because we love our partners happy and our machines safe. Let's recap the advantages, shall we? You get dedicated resources, so your project is served right. Sounds good? Bare with us, because there is more. Your machine is configured exactly to your needs and requests and updated constantly. By now you think your worries are all solved? If not, here is something that will really make you rest your worries aside: regarding the interaction with client applications, you have an easy, approachable interface towards your content, so you can edit, create, update content with ease and hassle free. Did we convince you that we really care about your projects wellfare?

Shared hosting insights • What you get from shared hosting and what is it? So we talked about managed hosting and what it has to o fg er. But how about shared hosting? Well, as shared hosting’s name says, its shared. What that means? It means you get shared resources(CPU, disk space, RAM) with others on a single server instance. The architecture of shared hosting is the same as managed hosting’, a layered one. The layers taken care of by the web host company are: –– OS layer — Server Software layer

Shared hosting insights • What you get from shared hosting and what is it? • Application layer and customer advantages The application layer in shared hosting is the clients full responsibility. That brings some extra hassle for you, as you have to apply updates to the applications you use by yourself. The main advantage of shared hosting is that management is really easy. You can manage virtually everything in a controlled environment with ControlPanels easily accessible. One other advantage is price, as shared hosting is cheaper due to the fact that you dont have to get a server only for yourself.